One of the benefits of working for such a supportive organisation like Jarrold Training is that I’ve had the opportunity to attend many training sessions myself over the years. This time it was our PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner course, time for the trainer to be trained…do trainers make good students?

PRINCE2 version 7 was released towards the end of 2023, and I attended a course to update my skills. Compared to the previous versions there is much higher emphasis on the people aspect and tailoring the method to suit the organisational environment, scale and complexity. This makes the methodology relevant to short simple projects all the way up to complex projects spanning many years.

Thanks to great training (and some hard work) I’m happy to say that I’ve passed both with good scores!

• Foundation 81%
• Practitioner 87%

There is initially a lot of information to take onboard for the Foundation exam and it is tested with a 1-hour multiple choice closed book exam.

It takes a while to really understand how it is applied for the Practitioner exam, which is multiple choice, 2.5 hours long, and open book. The practical application is brought to life throughout the training (and exam) with four varied scenarios ranging in time from a few months to several years. The scenarios also cover different organisation types – non-profit, construction, data science and cyber security.

If you are starting (or formalising) your project management journey then PRINCE2 is a great place to start. It may well be all you need, even if you end up working for an organisation that uses APM or any other project management methodology. The PRINCE2 principles along with common sense are entirely relevant for projects large and small.

Overall, I think PRINCE2 version 7 is a fantastic course and qualification to have, and I’ve enjoyed the journey too! If you don’t fancy jumping straight into a 5 day 2 exam situation, then try our 1 day Introduction to Project Management course to start your project management journey.